Understanding and managing the food-energy-water nexus – opportunities for water resources research

Water markets in the Murray-Darling Basin

The 21st century will witness the collision of two powerful forces, burgeoning population growth, together with a changing climate. With population growth, water scarcity will proliferate to new areas across the globe. And with climate change, rainfall will become more fickle, with longer and deeper periods of droughts and deluges. This report presents new evidence to advance understanding on how rainfall shocks coupled with water scarcity, impacts farms, firms, and families. On farms, the largest consumers of water in the world, impacts are channeled from declining yields to changing landscapes. In cities, water extremes especially when combined with unreliable infrastructure can stall firm production, sales, and revenue. At the center of this are families, who feel the impacts of this uncertainty on their incomes, jobs, and long-term health and welfare. Although a rainfall shock may be fleeting, its consequences can become permanent and shape the destiny of those who experience it. Pursuing business as usual will lead many countries down a “parched path” where droughts shape destinies. Avoiding this misery in slow motion will call for fundamental changes to water policy around the globe. Building resilience to rainfall variability will require using different policy instruments to address the multifaceted nature of water. A key message of this report is that water has multiple economic attributes, each of which entail distinct policy responses. If water is not managed more prudently, from source, to tap, and back to source, the crises observed today will become the catastrophes of tomorrow.

Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability

The latest in a set of major water reforms in the Australian Murray–Darling Basin occurred in November 2012 with completion of a new integrated water resources plan for the region (the Basin Plan). This occurred over a four-year period (2009–12) and was not without controversy. However, perhaps the most challenging part of this reform is occurring now with the implementation of the Basin Plan between 2012 and 2024. This paper discusses the key tasks to be undertaken by June 2016 and the main challenges in their implementation. A companion paper discusses the challenges in implementing the other tasks that need to be settled by 2024.

The Australian Murray–Darling Basin Plan: challenges in its implementation (part 1)

Water markets as a response to scarcity

https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2267&context=appecon_facpub

Gary D. Libecap

Papers

Comparative assessment of water markets: insights from the Murray–Darling Basin of Australia and the Western USA